The project is the outcome of an invitation in 2005 of a family-based wine-making and agro-business company to master plan an innovative resort concept that would combine the rural experience of wine and olive oil production, with the amenities of leisure destination. With 66 hectares, the site is in the vicinity of the whitewashed town of Montemor-o-novo, in the Alentejo, near the UNESCO-listed city of Évora. Located on a gentle valley facing South and overlooking the skyline of the town’s medieval castle, the master plan was devised in a system of clustered villas and terraced row-houses reminiscent of the former agricultural compounds of the Alentejo, known as “monte”, which literally means “mount” or “hill” in English; an etymological reference to its topographic condition. In addition, a small lake cools the air and is used for leisure activities besides serving as a sustainable water-retaining basin for agriculture.

The hotel is the main building and services centre of the whole resort. The programme includes reception, clubhouse, restaurant, spa with indoor pool and back-of-house service support to the adjacent guesthouses. In addition, the building functions as a winery, where guests experience the whole winemaking process, from grapes selection, crushing, fermentation and pressing, to barrel aging, blending, filtering and bottling.

Inspired on the white walled patios of the Alentejo, the building was conceived as a hinged prism from which its four corners were cut-off (reception, chill-out, restaurant terrace and industrial patio), creating areas of shade and intimacy. Topographically, the volume has been carefully positioned to meet the contours of the ground with the least change. The large window of the indoor pool at the lower level, suggests itself as a wall folded to release the views of the landscape. Inside, oak wood fluted wainscots and thick black slate from Alentejo, convey an atmosphere of comfort and warmth, creating a striking contrast with the roughness of the areas devised for the wine production operation.

Overlooking the lake, the guest suites of the hotel are broken down in a series of rows and terraces, forming a kind of amphitheatre adjacent to the main building. To adjust to the topography, minimize their visual impact and make the most of the lake views, these 2-storey units are half-buried in two terraces following the topographic contours. Within this setting, it was possible to create a discreet intermediate level for parking between terraces from which the entry is made by descending into a sunken patio. In plan, these units are centralized around the living room, which opens onto the main patio and lake views. A beam structure simultaneously generates a protective shade from the south sun and offers the opportunity for an evocative vine gazebo that blends its presence with surrounding landscape.

Besides designing the master plan, the hotel, the apartments and a nucleus of villas, PROMONTORIO was invited to curate, the invitation to four other studios to design the remaining nucleuses of villas, namely: Peter Märkli, of Zurich, Sergison Bates, of London, Carrilho da Graça, of Lisbon, and José Paulo dos Santos, from Porto.

This new building is an integral component of ‘Europaallee’, a currently emerging district adjacent to Zürich’s central train station. A plinth of retail programming anchors the project to its site, while its upper volumes consist of flexible office spaces that, due to their shallow depth and efficient façade grid, can be occupied by several individual companies or a larger singular tenant. These dual programs posed the challenge of creating two unique lighting and spatial requirements within this prominently sited building. The main entry has been positioned along the parallel ‘Europaaallee’, and opens onto the ground floor’s main retail and circulation spaces. From the ground floor, a central staircase complemented by two ramping escalators traverses and connects these areas. Foreseeing a possible conversion into future residential units, the building’s flexible structure was designed to allow for such a repurpose of its program. The resulting silhouette, and the alignment of its highest points with the trackside façades of the two adjacent plots, will ensure a powerful and unified building amid the area’s planned structures, further defining the distinguished context of the surrounding ‘Europaallee’.

Wiel Arets (1955) is an internationally renowned architect. He graduated from the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands in 1983, where he received a Master of Science in Architecture. He established his own office that same year, which later expanded throughout Europe. His writings and projects are published globally. Since 1989 he has continually taught at the world’s most distinguished universities. From 1995 to 2001 he was Dean of the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam, and from 2012-2017, was the Dean of the College of Architecture (CoA) at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago, where he remains a tenured professor. An eminent critic, he was the President of the Jury for the 2012 Venice Biennale of Architecture, Chair of the Jury for the 2013 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture—Mies van der Rohe Award, and established in 2014, together with the CoA, the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP), of which he is President of the Board.

The site possesses an impressive view over Zurich, the lake and the mountains due to its location on the Zürichberg. The building geometry was developed as a result of maximization of space within the legal framework. In order to let the surfaces of the volume respond to light and environment through their inclination angle, a sculptural relief in anodized aluminum was developed for roof and facade, which gives the building a natural appearance, despite its materiality.

The building’s facade facing the street reacts rather introvertedly with limited size windows, while it opens generously on the southern and western facades with panoramic windows for views. In the climatically open staircase, a perforation of the building skin causes a textile-like shell that accompanies the transition from public to private space with a play of light and shadow. It gives access to three apartments that develop over four floors : a top appartment with roof terrace, an upper floor apartment and a two-story apartment with garden access.

The exterior spaces recessed from the building`s facade are generating spaces with a haptic quality in solid wood. The roof terrace is invisible from the surroundings.

Norman Foster and the Trustees of the non-profit Norman Foster Foundation today announced that this new independent institution for interdisciplinary research, education, and projects in the fields of architecture, design, and urbanism will open its headquarters in Madrid in June 2017.

To mark the inauguration, the Foundation will present the day-long global forum Future is Now, bringing together leading design practitioners, policy makers, scholars, and artists. The Forum will address tomorrow’s foreseeable social, economic, and design challenges and how they are affecting our interactions today with the built environment.

Norman Foster and the Trustees have also announced the appointment of the inaugural Director, architectural historian and curator Maria Nicanor, who joins the Foundation from London´s V&A Museum and New York´s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

The Norman Foster Foundation promotes interdisciplinary thinking and research to help new generations of architects, designers, and urbanists anticipate the future. The Foundation believes in the importance of connecting architecture, design, technology, and the arts to better serve society, and is committed to the value of a holistic education that encourages experimentation through research and projects.

Since 1999, the Norman Foster Foundation in London has provided yearly travelling fellowships through London´s Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) to encourage architecture students and scholars to travel anywhere in the world to pursue research about the future of cities.holistic education that encourages experimentation through research and projects.

At the Foundation’s core is its Archive, a world-class facility established in 2015 and now available to scholars for the first time, which constitutes the primary source of information on the life, work, and ideas of Norman Foster and the practices he has led. The Archive´s holdings span from the 1950s to the present, with more than 74,000 items inventoried to date. Materials including drawings, models, photographs, sketchbooks, and memorabilia continue to be added on an ongoing basis. The Archive´s database is openly available online through the Norman Foster Foundation’s website.

The Foundation’s first built project was the Droneport, which was unveiled at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2016 and which is on permanent view at Venice’s Arsenale since March 2017. The Droneport is a new building type that can be constructed by local communities in Africa as a civic and social hub, landing site for drones, and center for drone manufacture. Development of a network of Droneports would allow for the delivery of medical supplies and other necessities to areas that are difficult to access because of a lack of transport infrastructure.

The decision to establish the Foundation as an independent entity, separate from the architectural practice of Foster + Partners, grew out of the perceived need for a permanent physical space that could house the Archive and study center, receive students and graduates, and present programmes and projects.

Starting in June 2017 and coinciding with its launch in Madrid, the Foundation will announce a series of educational and research initiatives, projects, and publications forged in collaboration with likeminded institutions around the world. To date, the Foundation has collaborated with institutions including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge (MIT), the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH), the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne (EPFL), the Polytechnic University in Madrid, and the University of Cambridge and Bournemouth University in the UK.

Norman Foster stated, “The birth of the Foundation grows out of the aspiration to help new generations to be better prepared to anticipate the future, especially in times of profound global uncertainty, and in particular to assist those professionals who are concerned with the built environment. Behind all this is our belief in the value of architecture, infrastructure, and urbanism to make a difference for the collective good. This may have a utopian ring to it; but the reality is that everything that surrounds us is the result of a conscious act of design. The quality of design determines the quality of our lives.”

The Foundation’s governance body includes renowned figures in the fields of architecture, design, and innovation. Find the complete list below.

The inaugural forum of the Norman Foster Foundation, Future is Now, will be held in three sessions dedicated to cities, technology and design, and infrastructure. Each session will feature a keynote address, an interview, and a moderated panel discussion in English and will be live streamed at www.normanfosterfoundation.org.

The first session, “Cities,” will have a keynote by Norman Foster. An interview with Michael Bloomberg, philanthropist, entrepreneur and three-term Mayor of New York, will be conducted by Francine Lacqua, Editorat- Large at Bloomberg. The panel discussion will feature Michael Bloomberg; architect and artist Maya Lin; Richard Burdett, Professor of Urban Studies at the London School of Economics; and Norman Foster.

The second session, “Technology and Design,” will have a keynote by Matthias Kohler, Professor of Architecture and Digital Fabrication at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. An interview of Jonathan Ive, Chief Design Officer of Apple, will be conducted by Gillian Tett, US Managing Editor of the Financial Times. The panel discussion will feature Niall Ferguson, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution; Nicholas Negroponte, Co- Founder of the MIT Media Lab; designer Marc Newson, Professor of Design at Sydney College of the Arts; architect and designer Neri Oxman, founder and Director of the Mediated Matter Group at MIT Media Lab; and designer and architect Patricia Urquiola, founder of Studio Urquiola.

The third session, “Infrastructure,” will have a keynote address by Alejandro Aravena, Executive Director of Elemental. An interview of Henk Ovink, Special Envoy for International Water Affairs for the Kingdom of the Netherlands, will be conducted by Christiane Amanpour, Chief International Correspondent for CNN. The panel discussion will feature Luis Fernández-Galiano, Professor at ETSAM and Director of AV/Arquitectura Viva; Jonathan Ledgard, Director of Rossums Group, founder of Redline and former Director for Afrotech of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne; Mariana Mazzucato, Director of the University College London Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose; Henk Ovink; and Janette Sadik-Khan, Principal for Transportation at Bloomberg Associates.

Following the third session, the forum will present a public conversation between artists Olafur Eliasson and Cornelia Parker, before ending with concluding remarks by Norman Foster.

The Foundation will work globally from a former residential palace on Madrid’s Calle Monte Esquinza, which houses its Archive, Library, and study spaces. The Norman Foster studio within the Foundation has designed and realized the Pavilion, a new one-story structure in the Foundation´s courtyard. Contrasting with the historical building, the Pavilion uses a laminated glass wall structure to support a glass fiber roof to create a floating structure with no visible means of support.

Artist Cristina Iglesias has designed a canopy to cover part of the entrance courtyard, which also provides shade for the façade. The Pavilion will be used for the Foundation’s programmes and events and will also house a collection of objects and visual material that has inspired Norman Foster throughout his career.

KCAP Architects&Planners and ORANGE Architects win the first prize in the urban and architectural competition for the most western tip of Vasilievsky Island in St. Petersburg. With its important role in the historical outreach of St. Petersburg towards the West, Vasiliesvky Island will become the most prominent manifestation of the city of St. Petersburg on the Gulf of Finland. With the urban plan, the 15 ha site will become a new part of the city with a diverse mix of urban functions facilitating and interconnecting the surrounding areas. It will become a new face of St. Petersburg as entrance of the city from the water.

The design concept of KCAP and ORANGE focuses on enhancing the iconic value of the city of St. Petersburg and on creating an attractive and high-quality environment for living, working and recreation. The peninsula will be enlarged with a park to enjoy the waterfront at the Finnish Bay. Solid blocks and a diversity of enclosed urban courtyards define the urban layout and refer to the historical structure of St. Petersburg. Towers form the layer above the urban blocks. They allow for spectacular panorama views to the sea and the city center. Topped with gold-coloured spires, in the tradition of St. Petersburg’s architecture, a unique landmark silhouette of Vasilievsky Island evolves and creates an expressive, recognizable and iconic image.

The international design competition was organized by Glorax Development and the municipality of St. Petersburg. It started with 12 competitors in the first phase and continued with six in the second round, of which three national and three international teams. Next to KCAP in cooperation with ORANGE Architects also A-Len from St. Petersburg was awarded with the first prize. Both teams will be involved in the further elaboration of the project.

KCAP Architects&Planners is an internationally operating design firm specialised in architecture and urbanism. KCAP holds offices in Rotterdam (NL), Zurich (CH) and Shanghai (CN) and works with a staff of 85 professionals.

Since its founding in 1989 by Kees Christiaanse, KCAP has grown to be one of the leading offices for architecture and urban planning in Europe and Asia.

ORANGE Architects was established in 2010 by Michiel Hofman, Patrick Meijers and Jeroen Schipper. ORANGE architects is a multidisciplinary design firm with offices in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, the design capitals of The Netherlands.

ORANGE Architects is working in the fields of architecture, interior design, urban planning and product development. The goal is to guide clients on a successful path towards inspiring, powerful and rich environments in every design-scale. From urban (re)development to product design; from collective housing to luxurious villa; from office planning to private interior.

ORANGE Architects has been working on ambitious projects in The Netherlands, Russia and the Middle East. The projects display ORANGE’s prime merit: the ability to embrace local traditions – and fuse them with new, innovative ideas and forms – creating synergy between present and future, between what is happening today and what will be tomorrow.

Elegant and iconic, the new headquarters of the FIM (International Motorcycling Federation) had to wait ten years before taking shape on a site in the outskirts of Geneva where road and railway meet.

It was in 2006 that LOCALARCHITECTURE and Bureau d’Architecture Danilo Mondada won the competition (conducted by the MEP – Mandat d’Études Parallèles – parallel development selection process) for the extension of the International Motorcycling Federation’s main headquarters in Mies in the canton of Vaud. Following a change of administration at the FIM the project was abandoned. A new selection procedure with invited architects was launched in 2013, with a modified functional programme. At this point the mandate was awarded to LOCALARCHITECTURE.

Set between the railway and the cantonal road connecting Geneva to the canton of Vaud, on a sloping terrain with trees, the new international headquarters of the motorcycling world has the air of a pavilion in a park. The building occupies the lower part of the naturally landscaped plot, an imposing circular presence when seen from the adjacent roundabout.

Acceleration, speed and kinetics

Set on a base which raises it above ground level and protected by a wide flat roof supported by fine columns, the building stands out as the focal point in a diverse architectural context.

Its circular forms evoke the movement and speed of the motorcycling world, suggested by the dynamic arrangement of the offset oval slabs connected by a forest of pillars. The vertical rhythm of the pillars and the depth of the façade produce a kinetic effect when viewed by passing drivers on the cantonal road or passengers on the railway.

The building is accessed by a path adjacent to the site. The main entrance connects directly to the access road while a secondary entrance on the north side of the building connects to the staff car park.

The new FIM building replaces the former headquarters, which was demolished. It comprises two storeys over the existing basement level and is accessed by two entrances, perpendicular to the façade, on the ground floor. They define the regular grid of the floorplan, leading users to a central hall which provides access to the various functions. The ground floor houses the major communal spaces: the auditorium and the training room on the east side, the cafeteria and exhibition space to the south. The spaces are designed to be flexible and modular.

At the heart of the building, with natural lighting from the skylight domes, is a monumental staircase that connects the two levels. Its spiral form extends the upward movement of the entrance hall, leading towards the administration and management facilities on the upper storey. Cast in concrete as a single unit, its triangular underside suggests a vertebrate structure – like a spinal column bearing the transparent framework of the building as a whole.

The building’s technical facilities were developed to ensure maximum flexibility for its users. In the peripheral office areas, the thermally active slab system provides heating and cooling from the ceiling, while the ventilation system and electricity network are fitted below the raised floor. The hall and circulation areas are free of all technical installations except for the floor at ground level, which is heated. Building acoustics are managed via circular baffles arranged on the office ceilings. Seasonal overheating from solar energy is managed at ground level by a system of external blinds and on the upper storey by the oversized roof slab, its contour designed to match the sun’s pathway across the sky.

Localarchitecture has been recognized nationally and internationally in publications and competitions. Recent awards include the Best Award 2015, the Lignum Award in 2015, 2012 and 2009, Distinction Romande d’Architecture Award in 2006 and Bois21 Award in 2005.

Localarchitecture has been involved in teaching for several years, in particular as lecturer at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and at the National Architecture School of Strasbourg (ENSAS), and through review jurys at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Zürich (ETHZ), Ecole d’architectes et d’ingénieurs de Fribourg (HES-SO), Haute Ecole d’Art et de Design de Genève (HEAD-HES-SO), or the Academy of Architecture of Mendrisio (USI).

This is a Reconstruction of a multi-family house with workshop rooms underneath in the area Seefeld of the city of Zurich. The house has been in a core zone since the new regulations. Therefore the outlines of the existing volumes are protected and the project had to be developed in collaboration with the conservation of monuments.

The project is a contextual dialogue with history, the house is 170 years old. The historic, massive stone walls were the starting point for applying new contemporary forms of living – fresh typologies:
5 small apartments in the ‘house’ and 4 residential ateliers in the former workshops.

The dwelling house is a townhouse built 170 years ago. The natural stone walls were created so long ago, but even then the walls were plastered. Now we have removed the original plaster layers and this led to a raw state of the natural stone walls, which never existed. It is a reference to the material, the construction and to the ‘work’ itself, how was it made?
The architectonic-social aspect, the bourgeois house of the time, is playing a minor part but it is still the same house from the outside.

In a confined space, we have developed a flowing, free-flowing space along the natural stone walls. A new typology of ‘promenade architecturale’ in a confined space, where, depending on the social structure and the course of the day, the programs unfold and communicate with the periphery, the natural stone wall.
The built in light weight strucures are plastered with basic plaster – and have a rocky appearance. The built-in furniture is made of raw concrete, raw wood and raw plaster.

In the workshops we answered to the large natural stone arches with a topography of concrete – a contemporary response to a strong historical element.
A stone landscape takes up programs that are only marginal in appearance – tectonics and light are in the focus, filling the space with a poetic force.

We have natural stone walls of one meter width, concrete furniture and wooden windows with a 20 cm thick solid frame. The dialogue on the historical context consists in the reference of the ‘work’, how and by whom was it made – at that time large stone blocks were stacked together – today, topographies were formed from reinforced concrete.
It’s about the craft.

All the elements were put into the raw original state or it was rebuilt raw – a tribute to the material – without hierarchization. There are no inferior materials. Social contamination and connotation disappear. As a result, the space becomes free and authentic – just as people can be.

A project designed by a team under the direction of the Brno based young architecture studio CHYBIK+KRISTOF has recently won the international competition for the new administrative centre of the Czech Forestry Commission in Hradec Králové. The winning proposal is a two-storey building on the edge of an existing forest, that uses wood extensively as construction material – as requested within the competition. The concept is based on incorporating the forest landscape into a five-finger building to create new relations between the inside office and the outside forest landscape. A nature trail surrounding the building allows to explore the different forest ecotypes, designed by Tomas Babka and breathe.earth.collective.

In summer 2016, a public two-round international architecture competition was announced, looking for a design for the new administrative centre of the Czech Forestry Commission that should substitute the existing insufficient headquater buildings on the south-western outskirts of Hradec Králové – a place next to one of the most sought-after forests in the Czech Republic.

More than forty architectural firms from the Czech Republic, Spain, Austria, Poland, Slovakia, France, United States, and Netherlands took part in the competition with its international jury consisting of Dorte Mandrup-Poulsen, Dietmar Eberle, Miroslav Šik amongst others. Five of these teams were selected to complete their proposals in the second round. The winning entry presented by CHYBIK+KRISTOF Architects & Urban Designers in collaboration with K4, Ivo Stolek, Jan Stolek, Tomas Babka and the breathe.earth.collective prevailed by its unconventional approach which, according to the jury, makes the building an open public institution rather than an administrative building, fulfilling the vision of a future-oriented envoironment. In addition, the jury praised the sensitive way of incorporating the building in the natural surroundings, its open-fronts and the modularity of the construction, which enables a variability of the interior layout.

„While inspecting the premises we also took a walk into the wooded areas, asking ourselves what it was that made us work in hot indoor offices when the best thing to do seemed to be to take a laptop to the woods and enjoy the tranquillity and airiness of the place while working. In fact, this idea was the driving force behind our proposal – what we sought to do was create a transparent, yet intimate and highly presentable working space. Having this concept in mind, we opted for a radial office layout relying on a central courtyard from which the building penetrates the wooded areas and the wooded areas penetrate the building,“ Ondřej Chybík, a founding partner of CHYBIK+KRISTOF Architects & Urban Designers, says.

The office sections are divided into five „fingers“ representing five independent administrative units forming an angle of 45° and converging in the central courtyard towards which the main entrance is orientated. The open front’s defining features comprise two protruding volumes – a conference hall and a cafeteria and canteen – which form the central meeting area of the building. All social functions are concentrated here, like a meeting room and a library.

The nature trail on the outside of the building starts on the roof with a presentation delineating the elements of sustainable forestry. The trail continues with a slide that takes visitors down to the courtyard and directs them along a winding pathway around the whole building. The central two-storey courtyard is lit by roof skylights and is complemented with supporting columns reminding the visitors of tree trunks that give the impression of a clearing in the middle of a forest. The program provided by the visitors’ centre may be seen as an added value of the design of the administrative centre that accentuates its being open to the public.

The office areas as such employs the urbanist concept of an office landscape and is interconnected with the exterior.. Corridors are virtually missing in the particular units. Instead, sub-centres with central staircases, storage areas and kitchenettes (which can be used for a number of activities from business meeting to informal gatherings/break-out activities) are inserted. The modularity of the construction enables both the division of the office area into enclosed units and the creation, by removing the non-load-bearing elements, of an open space area with subcentres. The segmentation of the ground plan ensures that all areas can offer sufficient amounts of daylight. The sub-basement is designed to provide additional functions such as parking spaces, wellness and fitness centre, depositories, and places with supplies for the cafeteria/canteen.

An integral part of the proposal is the concept of the landscape and vegetation which CHYBIK+KRISTOF Architects & Urban Designers developed in cooperation with landscape architect Tomáš Babka, and the Austrian, breathe.earth.collective, who have been known for their remarkable work on the Austrian Pavilion at the Expo in Milan ‘breathe.austria’.

Together they developed the concept to improve the relation between the outside and the inside within an immediate proximity to the building. The five major sectors are going to provide different local forest experiences, such as spruce, beech and fir, pine and birch, and oak and hornbeam forests, which refer to the basic types of forest found in the Czech Republic. The main entrance is designed to serve as a highly-presentable vision of a park in the future with fully-grown trees performing with technical adeabate cooling elements. The vegetation proposed is not a mere accompaniment to the design. It is rather meant to educate and recharge its visitors as well as the employees through the refreshing forest atmosphere.

In the open courtyards the succession of the actual forests will be initiated through the provision of an intensive ground layer based on substrates, stones, shrubs and perennials. Considering the effort to install an instant forest landscape, the designers propose a development scheme of the forest. The upcoming 20 years the surrounding forest landscape will be constantly changing.

Energy concept and sustainability

The administrative centre of the Czech Forestry Commission has been designed as an energy-efficient building which makes extensive use of wood as a building and aesthetic material. The above-ground part consists of a framework construction made of glued laminated timber profiles, columns are also made of glulam. Full facade elements and internal crossbars are made of compact wooden boards. The sub-basement and staircase cores are made of reinforced concrete. Wood pellet stoves are used to provide heating. Alternatively, boreholes can be used and photovoltaic arrays may be installed on the roof of the building and serve as renewable energy sources. In addition, the building is equipped with a controlled heat recovery ventilation system, systems to save drinking water, smart rainwater management systems, external shading devices and energy-efficient LEDs which, as a whole, make it a building with virtually zero energy consumption. Energy consumption and heat and water management data will be monitored closely and accessible to the public on the internet.

The studio was founded in 2010, by two classmates, Ondřej Chybík and Michal Krištof. The two young architects succeeded in forming a studio consisting of thirty associated architects. The studio boasts a large number of completed and on-going projects on which they work with a sense of local context with a large perspective. Last year, they opened two new branches in Prague and Bratislava.

Ondřej Chybík (* 1985, Brno, Czech Republic) studied architecture and urban design in Brno, in Graz and at ETH Zurich. He is a holder of the Rector’s Award from BUT in Brno (Brno University of Technology) and he won the Bohuslav Fuchs award for best project design at the Faculty of Architecture of the Brno University of Technology. After completing his studies, he worked at the Viennese studio, PPAG. His work was exhibited at the MoMA NYC as part of Uneven Growth exhibition. In 2015 Forbes selected him in “30 under 30” list.

Michal Krištof (* 1986, Kláštor pod Znievom, Slovakia) studied architecture and urban design in Brno and Brussels and is also holder of the Rector’s Award from BUT in Brno. After graduation he worked at Bjarke Ingels Group – BIG in Copenhagen. In 2016 Forbes selected him in “30 under 30” list.

Breathe Earth Collective

Breathe Earth Collective is a think-and-do-tank to find new ways of dealing with the interrelations of architecture and natural ecosystems by combining sustainable technologies with natural processes. Their focus is on exploring new issues in dealing with the globally vital nourishment of air and climate.

Breathe Earth Collective works transdisciplinary with focus on non-hierarchical networking to face high complexity with designers and specialists across the disciplines. Besides meeting in Breathe Earth Collective all team members run individual practices in different fields and scales. As part of team.breathe.austria they have been responsible for the Austrian Pavilion at Expo 2015.

Knight Dragon unveils a new £1billion landmark, designed by international architect and engineer Santiago Calatrava, at the heart of its transformation of Greenwich Peninsula.

This major new landmark is set to transform Greenwich Peninsula, London’s emerging cultural district. Residents and visitors to the Peninsula will arrive from the tube into an 80ft high winter garden and glass galleria. The scheme will total 1.4 million sq ft including a new tube and bus station, theatre, cinema and performance venue, bars, shops and a wellbeing hub. Above this will rise three towers of workspaces, apartments and hotels, all connected to the Thames by a stunning new land bridge.

Greenwich Peninsula is London’s largest single regeneration project. The £8.4 billion transformation of the Peninsula will over the coming years provide 15,720 new homes in seven new neighbourhoods: home to central London’s first major film studio, a new design district, schools, offices, health services and public spaces, all wrapped by 1.6 miles of River Thames. As the gateway to Greenwich Peninsula, Calatrava’s Peninsula Place signals the intent and ambition for this whole new district.

Peninsula Place is part of the Peninsula Central neighbourhood. Sitting next to The O2, this neighbourhood will be home to a variety of residences, including within Peninsula Place by Calatrava and two buildings designed by Greenwich Peninsula’s masterplanners Allies & Morrison. Together these will provide 800 new homes, 200 of which will be affordable. These add to the hundreds of new homes that have been built to date by Knight Dragon across three new neighbourhoods, and which people are already calling home.

Santiago Calatrava is the latest architect to be commissioned by Knight Dragon. Chosen for his world-class designs and experience in delivering transport hubs, Calatrava joins a list of other architects including SOM, Marks Barfield, DSDHA, Alison Brooks and Duggan Morris who are also helping make Greenwich Peninsula a world-renowned destination.

Sammy Lee of Knight Dragon said:

“My ambition is for Greenwich Peninsula to be a unique cultural destination for Londoners and visitors to this global city. Calatrava’s contribution will help ensure that the UK’s biggest regeneration project fulfils its potential to become just that”.

Knight Dragon are jointly spearheading the development of Peninsula Place with their partners the Greater London Authority and Transport for London.

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “I am delighted that Santiago Calatrava has chosen London for his first major project in the UK. This shows that London remains open to investment, trade and the very best talent from around the globe.

“This new landmark for London and the growth of this area of London will create a new cultural district for Londoners and visitors from around the world.

“It is an honour to be designing such a piece of the fabric of London, a city I love. In designing this scheme, I have been inspired by London’s rich architectural heritage and the very special geography of the Peninsula. It will be a project that reflects both this and the ambition of Knight Dragon for Greenwich Peninsula.”

Knight Dragon

Knight Dragon is a development company with long-term vision and robust financial backing. It offers a rare combination of scale, vision, stability and expertise, making it uniquely positioned to deliver a distinctive and sustainable new destination at Greenwich Peninsula. Its team balances international scale and resources with expert local knowledge.

Knight Dragon’s previous project in London, The Knightsbridge, was voted residential development of the year by Property Week, and set a new standard in premium property available in the capital.

Knight Dragon is owned by Dr Henry Cheng Kar-Shun. Dr Cheng and the wider Cheng family have substantial interests in property and infrastructure in Hong Kong and China. These include the majority interest in one of Asia’s leading developers, New World Development, which has a market capitalisation of $4.6 billion.

Santiago Calatrava

Santiago Calatrava founded his practice in Zurich 1981. Early projects for the firm included the new Zurich-Stadelhofen Train Station in 1983 – a key centre-city node in Zurich’s suburban rail network, and the Bach de Roda Bridge in Barcelona in 1984, the first of many bridge projects that have helped establish his international reputation.

The firm now has offices in Zurich, Paris, New York and Dubai and has completed some of the most distinctive, international projects in recent years including 2004 the Athens Olympic Sports Complex, 2005 Turning Torso Tower in Malmö, 2007 Three Bridges in Reggio Emilia, 2008 Quarto Ponte sul Canal Grande in Venice, 2009 the Liège-Guillemins TGV Railway Station, 2012 Calgary’s Peace Bridge, 2013 the Stazione Mediopadana in Reggio Emilia, 2015 Museu do Amanha, Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil, 2016 World Trade Centre Transportation hub New York City, USA.

Currently working on projects over three continents, Santiago Calatrava personally directs the design of every project that he undertakes; from the initial sketches through detailing and construction documents. He is directly involved in all decisions that affect the design of his work through to the completion of construction.

The gastronomic pavilion at the ETH Hönggerberg has been conceived as a prism that serves as an architectural filter between the campus and the landscape and serves as a meeting point for teachers, visitors, employees and students, as well as a reception place for international guests. On the south side opening to the campus and on the north side allowing to enjoy a beautiful view over the wide landscape, the building has an open and flexible structure and its series of wood porticoes form an elegant hall.

Without providing any formal or constructive exaggeration, the new building presents itself as a simple and elegant volume made of wood and glass. Its entire structure is made of prefabricated wood elements and therefore it is completely demountable. The large windows between the series of wooden porticoes can all be widely opened, their frames are made of aluminum painted in white. Between the porticoes comfortable niches are being created which offer the guests privacy and are also a place to enjoy a meal on the interior-exterior threshold.